The Goodness of Saint Roch

Alice Dunbar-Nelson was born in 1875 as Alice Ruth Moore in New Orleans, LA. She resided in New Orleans through her teachers training program at Straight University and began teaching in New Orleans.

Her first book, Violets and Other Tales, was published in 1897. She moved to Brooklyn in 1897 and ended up meeting and then marrying the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar in 1898. They were divorced in 1902 and she then moved to Wilmington, Delaware. In 1916 she married Robert J. Nelson, a civil rights activist, journalist, and politician. In the early 1920's they both edited and published the Wilmington Advocate, a progressive Black newspaper.

From the 1920's through the 1930's she was prominent as a political and social activist and in demand as a public speaker. She died in 1935 at the age of 60.

These 14 short stories beautifully capture the time and place of the New Orleans of Dunbar-Nelson's youth and young adulthood . Afterword by Tim Murray, University of Delaware, where Alice Dunbar-Nelson's papers are archived.